Ugh, anthologies are like SO over, you guys. Totes. And yet, people keep doing them. “The Perfect House” came out this past July as a release from Wild Eye Releasing and once again reminds us of how badly we need some original horror stories on the scene. And it isn’t just the anthology framework here that’s overdone, it’s ALL of it. It’s an entire film of “Yes, yes, we KNOW, we KNOW,” with perhaps a spot of “Oh, hey. That was sort of nice.”.

Here’s how it goes down:

Enter a young family (parents and 3 kids) going to dinner at their neighbor’s house. Things are going well (kinda sorta – the in your face foreshadowing has already told us shit’s about to go down) till a weedwhacker (I think) is brought up. Chaos ensues for a brief moment. End Scene.

Enter a young couple who are house shopping. They stop at a house that they are so super uber excited about and meet with the oddly super sexual realtor (whom the wife does NOT bitch slap for some reason) who shows them around the house (thankfully without having sex with either or both of them) while telling them that the basement is usually a deal breaker. But why?? End scene.

Enter another family in said basement on a dark and stormy night…No really, it is. Big storm so they’re all sleeping in the basement because it’s all dark and scary. We’ve got a brother and sister who look to be between 13 and 15 years. We’ve got a dad who is REALLY into protecting the daughter for some reason. And then we’ve got mom, who is a scary psycho bitch. Needless to say, the sleepover doesn’t end well. The problem is, I think there was supposed to be some sort of twist or something but it was so dark I don’t know what happened (not to mention 3 different versions of the same story were told – NOT helping). This one could’ve been okay with a clearer ending and some more light in the basement.

After a totally not seamless transition (I spent a good two minutes trying to figure out if the girl in this story was the same as the girl in the first story despite our having gone back to the couple/realtor scene b/c they looked so similar), enter another teenage girl and a psychopathic guy, say in his early 20s? in the deal breaking basement. This time the girl is in a cage (kinky) and is being forced to watch as dude allegedly kills a person a week. Just fyi, he’s had her for FIVE years. A person a week for five years? How many people is that exactly? 260? Have the police not noticed the 260 people that are missing from this town (is there even a town left at this point)? Or are they seriously just so incompetent that they can’t find a serial killer who’s been in the same house for 5 freaking years with a girl in a cage? SERIOUSLY?? Logic, thou art a fool. *eye roll* And then after that, it’s just torture porn for a thousand years or so. I thought the torture porn trend had finally died out but it seems I was wrong. *sighs* On the plus side, the effects are really good so if you’re a gorehound, you will most definitely be pleased.

Back with the sexy realtor/married couple, the wife part of said couple is getting totally wigged out by the basement. Bad feels and all, ya know? Her hubby still says everything is fine but you know what? He’s apparently cut his finger on something pretty badly (from the amount of blood gushing out) and yet he still has a goofy grin on his face because of the realtor, so what does he know?

ANNNNNDDDDD we’re back with our original family, who went to have a friendly dinner with the not at ALL crazy neighbor man, who didn’t at ALL flip out about a weedwhacker and then handcuff them all up to indulge in some more torture porn that’s a cross between “Saw” and “Would You Rather?”. Ye gods, when will the torture porn/”I’m Jigsaw’s prodigy” end??? But once again, it’s got some good gore (although *spoiler* if you have issues with young kids dying, you might want to skip this one).

Also on the plus is Felissa Rose as the mother of the “Let’s go to dinner and get murdered!” family (you might better know her as Angela from the amazing “Sleepaway Camp”). Most of the acting is well done – the young couple and realtor were a little under par while Girl in a Cage was pretty kickawesome. Props to the makeup team and FX – they went above and beyond. This film suffered the fate of many a horror flick in that parts of it were much too dim to see anything. That was mostly in the basement scene and then part of the family at dinner scenes were hard to see as well.

To sum up, “The Perfect House” isn’t the worst thing you could watch by far, it’s just tired, another “wash, rinse and repeat” horror film. But if you’re into anthologies or the torture porn genre, then by all means check it out because you might like it. Just hop online and hang a left at their website!